


the long black veil

by orphan_account



Category: Creepypasta - Fandom, Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe-Crossover, Heir of Breath Reader, Horror, Not Romance, Other, Reader Insert, Sburb Player Reader
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 18:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4489524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Homestuck belongs to Hussie<br/>Jeff belongs to whoever made him<br/>You belong to yourself<br/>The story belongs to me</p>
    </blockquote>





	the long black veil

**Author's Note:**

> Homestuck belongs to Hussie  
> Jeff belongs to whoever made him  
> You belong to yourself  
> The story belongs to me

_Tick. Tick. Tick._

 

Sleep never comes easy anymore. Your heart is heavy in your chest, anchoring you to the world of the waking. Even when you do manage to sleep, your dreams are haunted by dying worlds and screaming families. Yours is always there, along with your little lizard people that you hung around with on your planet. Typheus laughs. All of your friends die.

 

But you’re not supposed to remember that.

 

Technically, you are (y/n) (l/n), student(or at least you were) and member of a loving family. But you are also (y/n) (l/n), orphan, Hero of Breath and saviour of Skaia.

 

Sometimes, you don’t know which is real.

 

You roll over in bed, and stare at the glowing gold nightlight plugged into the wall. The windows are shut and locked, heavy white curtains pulled tight-they let light in, but no one can see through them. The door has three locks; you paid for and installed them yourself in the first month when your parents refused to. Even thought you haven’t left the room since you went to bed, you still feel like things are watching you, despite that you checked under your bed, on your ceiling, and in your closet before you tried to sleep.

 

The clock ticks. Your gaze wanders to the heavy metal flashlight by your bed, and the one you can feel settled in your strife specibus. Your black backpack, carefully stuffed with supplies so you could throw it into your sylladex at will, lies next to your boots and the pale blue hoodie that makes you sick when you look at it, but feels comforting beyond all else when you feel really bad. When you wear it, you can sometimes believe you are still a god.

 

You forget about trying to sleep and sit up, grabbing the flashlight off your nightstand, clicking the button and pulling a history of China out from under your bed. After a moment, you give up and pull the hoodie over your head as well, flipping the hood up. You’ve been reading a lot lately; it gives you something to occupy your mind when you can’t sleep. The words are comforting, and it’s been making you better at English, too. Even if that doesn’t matter much to you now, it’s still a nice feeling.

 

You read slowly, holding your flashlight in the crook of your neck and trying to avoid getting any more paper cuts. There were already bandages wrapped around five of your fingers, and it wasn’t fun to wash dishes with the cuts. You honestly don’t mind them much; you’re used to it, and they make you feel real. Before Mom made you wear gloves for the entire first winter, you had pulled off pieces of your cuticles every day. On very bad days, the blood had oozed up through your bandages and through your gloves whenever you left the house.

 

The constant ticking of the clock reminds you of how late it is and how tired you are going to be when(if) you wake up the next day. At this point, it would probably be best to just stay up the whole night and forget sleeping. Your eyes have already begun to feel dry and heavy, but the nightmares are bad enough for you to not care. Besides, maybe this way you could cheer yourself up before tomorrow; you and your family were supposed to go out to the movies and then over to Ikea. Maybe you could Skype one of your friends and talk to them, probably Bloody in Costa Rica; undoubtedly she’d still be up.

 

Something creaks outside in the hallway, and you freeze, instantly clicking the flashlight off and setting your book aside. Your heartbeat begins to speed up, and you carefully shift off of the bed, thankful once more for your newly renovated, not creaky floors. As you creep along the floor and try to avoid slipping on your socks, the creaking lessens, but when you get up to the door, you can feel the vibrations of footsteps in the hallway. None of your family’s doors had opened.

 

The wind outside, formerly a calm breeze, stops completely for a second, and then picks up at a much more intense speed, battering the branches of trees against the house. You struggle to breathe, air already seeping in through the cracks in your house and gathering around you in a miniature tornado. Images flash to life of your planet, fighting, and the feeling of blood dripping down your waist where the Archagent’s stolen sword had pierced your belly was too real again. The flashlight’s casing buckles under the pressure of your grip, and the small sound of popping metal is what manages to bring you back to the present.

 

Carefully, you slide the first of the locks open, and twist the second before freezing again as a bump and a muffled curse reaches your ears. The air is amplifying it for you, and it is still quiet, so you doubt anyone else could hear it, or that the perpetrator would hear you. Your hands tremble as the person opens your parents’ door slowly, only a slight creak alerting you, and you quickly release the third lock. Wind pushes your door open soundlessly the moment you twist the doorknob, and you creep out into the hallway.

 

Your hands shake as you slip down the hallway, the darkness making it almost impossible to see. The wind flows in front of you, though, better than any forward scout, and as you tiptoe it brings you a smell of human; their smell is dirt and old blood, leather and a sharp tang of steel. Only one person, then. With a weapon of some kind.

 

Inside the room, you can hear your mother waking up; she’s always been the lighter sleeper of your parents. There’s a short cry of surprise that’s muffled a moment later, and you feel your heart jump in your chest. When you reach the door, stopping at the threshold and freezing, you can hear a low crooning from your parents’ bed.

 

“Shhh...shhh...you don’t want to wake up the kids, do you?” The voice is male, husky and rough, and the air gets a little colder when he speaks. The shaking has now spread to your entire body. Your mother whimpers, and your father growls through what sounds like a gag.

 

The man(boy? You can’t tell) laughs lowly, more of a bark than a laugh. “Don’t bother, I tied you up nice and tight. Now, just hold still, and maybe it won’t hurt as much.” A soft cackle.

 

_“Maybe.”_

 

You clench your fists, shaking with fear and rage and every emotion in between. The flashlight in your hands will break soon, and with a soundless motion you slip it back into your sylladex and pull your game weapon out for the first time in a month. It’s heavier, reinforced to keep from shattering in your grip, and you know it packs a mean punch, since it’s an exact duplicate of the weapon you used on the Black King.

 

The boy’s stench fills your sensitive nose as he moves, settling overtop of your parents. They’re crying, struggling, but you can barely hear them through the gags and the pounding of your heart. A sound of swishing metal echoes in the room, and your mother screams, just before something claps over her mouth. The boy laughs again.

 

“Now...go...to….”

 

You punch the light switch next to you, red filling your vision, and the wind slams the house with gusto, enough to make the whole room shake. Bright light fills the room, and the boy’s head snaps up and toward you, teeth audibly gritting. Both of your bound and gagged parents stare at you in horror, your mother's right cheek sliced open in a partial Glasgow smile. Blood drips slowly down her cheek.

 

It takes you a fraction of a second to leap on the boy and slam the flashlight into his head, throwing both of you into the opposite wall. Something metallic clatters to the ground as you do so. Your personal storm rages around the house as you hit him and hit him until you feel his blood sticky on your hands. When he somehow manages to wrench the flashlight from your hands and turns it on you, he only gets one hit in before you grip his shoulders and slam his head into the point of the dresser.

 

Jurassic Flash finds its way back into your hands as you stumble to your feet, dizzy and sick from the harsh blow the boy landed on your skull. Reddish spit dribbles from your lips as you slowly move toward your mother, untying one of her wrists. She’s shaking and crying when she reaches up to pull out the gag as you work on the other hand. It only takes a moment before she’s screaming loudly as you’re yanked backward.

 

Your back hits the wall as hands close around your throat, and somewhere from the back of the room your younger sister screams. Through your coughing for air, you try to look around the boy, but his hands only tightened.

 

“What the _fuck,_ ” he hissed lowly. “do you think you’re doing?”

 

His hair is pitch black and matted with filth, hanging loose and heavy past his shoulders. The glare he wears is far too wide, bloodshot, eyes set in deep sockets with most of the skin around them cut away. Red infection festers around his deep Glasgow smile, exposing the inside of his mouth and rubbed raw around the edges. All of his face is chalk white and looks more like leather then skin.

 

But the most disturbing part of him is his features. He’s _young._ He’s _your age._ Something twisted him into this. In another life, he could have been you.

 

No. You’re nothing like him. He was going to kill your family. He’s a monster.

 

_You killed, too, in the game. You’re just as much of a monster as he is, then._

 

You killed game constructs, not real people! You had to, to save your race! There was no choice involved, and you didn’t enjoy it like this boy did!

 

_Did you?_

 

Your parents are crying behind the boy, father shouting obscenities; and though you managed to free your mother, she’s in shock, and is struggling to untie your father. The boy’s knots are too tight, and you can see your sisters running down the stairs, the elder’s phone pressed to her ear as she sobs. Black spots begin to dance in your vision as the boy presses his recovered knife to the corner of your mouth.

 

“You should have just stayed in your room,” he spits, slicing into your cheek a little. Tears burn the edge of your vision. “Now I’m going to make it _slow,_ ”

 

He throws you to the ground, hunching over you and ignoring the screams from your still bound parents. Blood begins to trickle from your head to the floor. The hot and stench of his breath makes you want to vomit. Splintering sounds from the window testify to the wind’s panic, trying to get in, but your mind has begun to shut down. If this was how you were going to die, you felt extremely pathetic. 

 

Are you just going to give up? He will kill your family after he kills you. He will kill countless others after them. And who knows how many he killed before that?

 

Besides, he is still human.

 

Fallen you may be, but you are still a God.

 

It’s that realization, coupled with the vision of your family’s corpses spattered with blood, that makes your world explode.

 

The wind gets its wish as the windows finally shatter, air gushing into the house and circling your family protectively. Rage burns through your veins as you shove the boy off of you as hard as you can manage. Maybe you shove him a little too hard, because his back cracks the drywall when he slams into it, and his cry of pain brings a slight curve to your lip. Cyclones grow from the floor up, taking any objects they can gather into themselves.

 

You more float to your feet then get to them, air currents propping you up where your muscles are too tightly wound or damaged to move. The tornado around you is visible now, dust and dirt and the occasional piece of debris whirling around you. Light does not gather around you, no outward symbol of your power displays other than the wind, but your hoodie changes and spreads, becoming soft and pliable as your God Tier robes appear around you.

 

The boy’s expression of shock lasts for approximately half a second before he growls and leaps at you. This time, you’re the one to grab him, grip his neck and squeeze, throw him to the ground and lift him again, only with air. Panic laces his features as he claws at empty air, his knife falling to the ground. Both of your parents have shrunk back against their headboard, watching you with huge eyes.

 

You float over to where he hangs, fists clenched tightly. Jurassic Flash hovers alongside you, at the waiting for your grip. The boy is contorted with rage, shaking in midair and fingers scrabbling against the cracking drywall. He’s angry, pissed beyond belief, but he isn’t as scared as you thought he would be. Gray eyes glare out at you through the trickles of blood down paper white skin.

 

“You don’t scare me,” he snarls, trying and failing to wrench out of the grip of your wind. Other people would have laughed, taunting him; Bloody certainly among them. Time would have said some poignant words to bring closure, or make him see his errors. Blaze would have spit in his face and tortured him to make the pain last.

 

You are none of them; you are tired and cold and scared and angry, so you draw him close to you, keeping his arms lowered, and as his fingers find your ribs and try to pierce your flesh you inhale, sharply. His pupils dilate-you’ve brought him close enough for you to see-and he chokes, falling to the ground as you drop your wind and blue light flows from his nostrils. Breath of life, air from his lungs, you will take it all. You are the Heir; you are Breath, and you will take all of his.

 

His hands close around his own throat, face gaining a blue tint. His legs jerk back and forth and his eyes roll back in his head, the sight grotesque beyond most you have seen, but you just don’t...care. The anger is still there, cold and all-consuming, but you’re tired. Death was something you thought you had escaped, but it had followed you, just like nightmares and the memory of godhood.

 

When he stops moving, the wind slows, and you float to the ground, sinking to your knees in front of his body. Sirens roar dimly at the edge of your hearing, but as your hoodie shrinks back to your torso and feet pound up the stairs, you crawl forward and shake his arm. His eyes are unseeing as they look up at you, still wrinkled from his glare. You’ve become woozy in the past few seconds; from blood loss and the overexertion of your powers, you’re betting.

 

You sit up properly and plop your head on your knees, never taking your eyes off the body. This happened with the King, too; you’d simply stared at his body while you waited for your friends to resurrect. Every fiber of you was certain that if you took your eyes off the body, he would get back up again. The fear was enough to keep you rooted in your place.

 

Even when the paramedics arrive and you can’t see anything through the film of tears, you never look away from those cold eyes.

 

***

 

Long after the police have escorted you and your family to the hospital, you slump in the spare bed in your mother’s room, attempting and failing to sleep. Both your sisters had to be sedated for them to sleep and to treat their shock, and your father has burns on his wrists from the rope. Your mother’s mouth has been stitched up, but it will scar. And you have a mild concussion, bruises, and will no doubt sleep for at least twenty-four hours once they clear you after the exertion of your powers.

 

They wouldn’t let you explain to your parents before they put them under, too. Half of you hoped they would dismiss it as an imagining, due to stress, but the rest of you knows that you wouldn’t be that lucky. Bloody and Blaze had inspected every inch of this world while they waited for you and the others to arrive, and they had found no trace of the Game in this universe, but the thought of your family dying again, or your tiny sisters forced to play as you did, makes your throat contract painfully.

 

You can still feel his hands wrapped around your throat, and the wind curling through the window you forced open can only calm you so much. Your phone was still at your cordoned off house, and with it any means of communicating with your friends. Hearing their voices would bring you at least some sense of peace, and probably bring at least one of them here to help you out. You still remembered the time Mind had been stuck in an abusive relationship and Bloody had almost eviscerated the scumbag. (You rode your bike for an hour to get there and clocked him over the head with Jurassic Flash.)

 

A nurse slips into the room and begins to refill the bags attached to you and your mother. You let your eyes shut as she moves around the room. Something about her movements, sharp and nervous, sends red flags up in your mind, especially after she leaves and someone outside begins speaking to her before she’s even closed the door. Gently, you coax the wind to bring you their words, and listen, through the quickly forming haze of exhaustion.

 

“I made sure to up the dosage to keep them asleep for a good while,” the nurse whispers. There’s an edge of tears in her voice. “Poor family...how on earth did he survive?”

 

“No one knows,” the other voice says wearily. He sounds aged, wise, and so, so tired. “It isn’t the first time he’s pulled something like this, and it usually ends badly for any surviving victims. The guard we have on this place should keep him out for a while, but the police said they need to be put into witness protection as soon as they’ve healed enough. Whatever he does to his normal victims, it’s ten times worse if they manage to survive.”

 

A faint whimper comes from the nurse as your mind reels. Wind slams into the building hard enough to shake the foundations, and outside the nurse and man stumble. Your mother shifts in her bed, and even though adrenaline bursts through your veins yet again, your limbs are too heavy to move. Even the wind can’t help you now.

 

He lived.


End file.
